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Sunday, June 13, 2010

A snail in the holy city . . .

This morning Rosemary was distributing Tearfund's latest campaign cards, all of which had been signed before I'd finished clearing up after Exclaimers and helping with coffee duty. In Exclaimers we were looking at the Garden of Eden story, as in last week's service, but carrying that forward to the synoptic Gospel accounts of Jesus's own temptation (a redemptive mirror experience) and to the image of the Tree of Life in Revelation. The Garden of Eden story was the one that they reported back on in the service - perhaps if I'd had visuals for the others it would have helped, also I'd chosen Mark's sparse account of the temptation rather than the details of Matthew and Luke. But for their craft work they made trees out of twigs, modelling clay, paper etc: two said they were making the tree of knowledge while the other two opted for the tree of life. One called it "an 'ever-fruiting' tree instead of just 'evergreen'", and then beside it planted a 'tree of happiness' too. As we sat in church I noticed a snail shell among the drawings of fish in the river of the water of life 'I found it under the chair', my son explained. I naively imagined it was merely the shell, until they were stood at the front with their creations and a head popped out. There was much protesting when I insisted on taking it out to the garden.

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Church of St John and St Stephen, Newtown, Reading. EcoCongregation

About this blog

I started this blog in November 2007 as a resource and a record of our church's journey towards becoming an EcoCongregation. In May 2009 we were assessed for the award and passed. It was due for renewal in 2012 but due to significant plans for rebuilding our church/school plant it seemed appropriate to wait a while. Once EcoCongregation was relaunched as EcoChurch we registered - various earlier activities had stopped or become infrequent so we were unsurprised to find we didn't make bronze. So a new journey has begun.

I hope that church members will find the blog useful and that it is also helpful to others with a concern for our environment. Please use any of the liturgy, green tips or ideas on it as you like. It would be lovely to hear back if you do. It would also be great to hear ideas and experiences from other churches.

The views expressed herein are my own and may not reflect those of all of the congregation.

The church of St John and St Stephen in Newtown, Reading is attached to a school with minimal green space. The Sunday morning congregation (about 70 from an electoral roll of just over 100) includes a wide range of ages and backgrounds and has long been concerned with overseas development issues (we are a Fairtrade church who support Tearfund and Christian Aid and several mission organisations. A number of the congregation are or have been involved in development and/or overseas mission). This concern was the inspiration for the decision to try to become an EcoCongregation.